Tiktok, YT Shorts, Insta Reels

[RBee]

So many people do reels, YT shorts, daily vlogs etc and claim themselves to be social media influencers/celebrities. There must be millions of videos on cooking/grooming/makeup/travel/US lifestyle etc
I used to follow a vlog since few years where a stay-at-home-mom(SAHM) talked about her every day life in Midwest US town. She is an engg grad and came to US as dependent. He videos are in Instagram/Facebook/Youtube/TikTok. She recently shared that Meta/Google pay for her content occasionally and flashed a couple of hundred dollar bills. Her engineer husband gave a wry smile. Her earnings might not be significant compared to what he makes in bi-monthly pay check based on his reaction.

She is in US for last 12 years. If she had enrolled in Masters in local university and joined the work force within 2 years, she could have built a good nest egg in 401K/IRA all these years.

I understand how ad-sense works and how sponsorship gives some earning opportunities but all the content creators say, it is lot of hard work in editing the raw videos, making the content palatable etc. Unless your video rakes 10-15 million views every time and there are 1 million subscribers, is this better than FT job if it too involves working insane hours?

[Returning_Indian]

You don't need millions of views on YT videos. 30-40k views/video of around 5-10 videos/month will get you $2-3k per month if those views are coming from US audience and they watch your video completely. Views from India is one tenth the income (sometimes even less). Europe is around half of US.

Political commentary and cooking shows may not pay as much as finance videos because of the type of advertisers. Editing takes time but once you get a hang of it, it can be done with FT job. I think it's more about keeping audience engaged with variety of content and that is where your passion kicks in. This is a creative field and certainly need passion for long term continuation. Money is byproduct. Fame/recognition is what drives people.

Not sure how much reels pay. I hardly see any ads. Maybe they are a way to gain followers and hope they watch full length videos.

As a side note, you are not allowed to make money on h4 visa without work permit. Not even from making videos. And this applies to worldwide income.

[nodegree]

Forget about making money, a lot of people like creating content and self expression. Money is a side benefit and unless they're doing it full time (in which case it becomes a job).